What is Life?
by AquaJinx
Summary: A one-shot on Scourge; What is life? Is it the bloody battles? Is it the tiny cry of a new-born kit? What is life? As the sun falls, the sunset glows, stars start to appear. Life. As the first few snowflakes fall, whispering gently to each other as they touch down, dappling the coats of cats. Life. It is also the heat of the battle, the realization at the end that you made it out.


**A/N: Just a short one-shot for you readers! This won't be continued at all, hence it being called a one-shot. Just something that kinda inserted itself into my head and wouldn't leave. :)**

What is life? Is it struggling to survive, killing to live, scrounging for the mere tiny morsel? Or was it being leader, commanding the smaller ones around to do your will, to be mighty, and great?

What is life?

Believing in the false gods that live in the stars, that help you, respecting things not there, praying to your ancestors? No, not that.

Scourge watched his clan, BloodClan, prepare for battle. No, life was living your best, having minions to do what you didn't want to, and the power to annihilate all that got in your way.

That was life.

His life was certanly better than that of the silly clans that lived in the forest, spending many wasted hours searching for food while BloodClan thrived on the spoils of their battles.

Now, he would drive the forest clans from their home, and take what he wanted. She-cats, kits to raise in his footsteps, and kill off the ones that were left and unwanted.

Now, he gave the command to move out. Hundreds of cats flowed from the entrance, prepped for battle, with their enforced claws, and studded collars.

As Scourge watched them go, a tiny voice seemed to whisper inside him. _Is this really life? Killing innocent kits, pregnant she-cats, fathers?_

 _Is it that bad? The toms and she-cats have borne kits that will grow up to kill more cats, and sire kits of their own. It is a endless cycle that I am breaking!_

 _No. You are only adding to the cycle._

Scourge pushed the irritating voice aside, leaping to the front of his mighty clan. The swarmed the underbrush, circling half of the clearing where he had met the clans before. There they were. They had joined forces, but were still many cats short of Scourge's army.

"Will you surrender?"

"Never!"

"BloodClan, attack!"

"LionClan, attack!"

Lionclan. Phesh. That name wouldn't help them any. The opposing forces smashed together, mixing in varying shades of black, brown, and white, with a few calico mixed in.

The scent of blood filled the air, sending BloodClan into a battle lust. Scourge's reinforced claws flew, sending blood into the air as he killed first one cat, then another. He pinned a young white cat against a rock and began ripping open his stomach.

The sight of all the blood and shredded fur didn't do a thing to Scourge.

"Scourge!" 

The yowl made he release the young cat as he faced the orange one. "Ah, Firestar!"

An evil grin crept across Scourge's face. "Come to die?"

The orange cat hissed and attacked.

 _He fights like a dog!_ Scourge laughed, dodging a killing blow. He brought his paw down upon the fiery cat's head, killing him instantly. _That wasn't so bad, now, was it?_

 _Look what you have done!_ The annoying voice from earlier came back. _You've killed him! All the blood of everycat you have ever killed are even now more upon your paws!_

Scourge shrugged off the voice and sliced a grey she-cat's shoulder, splitting it wide open to the bone.

 _So what? Blood, dead cats; I don't care about them!_

 _Exactly._

The voice left, leaving a chill in Scourge's heart.

 _Maybe the voice is right... Maybe I should stop killing,_ He mused, biting a cat's foreleg, hearing the bone snap. _Na. But where did the voice come from anyway?_

"Scourge!" The yell made Scourge whip around, his jaw opening in shock. "Firestar?! But I-You're dead!"

Firestar stood proudly, wound completely healed. "You did kill me, but unlike you, I have the nine lives of a **true** leader!" 

The two leaders lept at each other, Firestar barely dodging another smack that had taken his first life.

 _Stop! Stop the killing!_ The voice in his head seemed to scream. _This is senseless! Retreat before you die! You will never be able to defeat a cat with eight more lives at his disposle!_

 _I can and I WILL defeat this cat!_ With that, Scourge shoved away the voice, watching as Firestar crouched down in submission. Yowling with triumph, Scourge leaped at the orange cat. Firestar launched up into Scourge's belly, ripping it open along with his throat.

Scourge fell in what seemed like slow-motion. Thousands of thoughts flitted through his head, seemingly irrelevant.

 _Dead kits, slaughtered, laying in pools of their own blood,_

 _His mother, licking his fur dry,_

 _No!_

 _I will come back, and I will get revenge!_

His body splashed down into mud and blood.

Small details as his life slipped away.

The sun shining through the leaves, dappling the bloody ground.

The shine of it on Firestar's fur.

A bird, flitting overhead.

This was life. The sun, living things... Life.

"Scourge is dead!"

 **A/N: LIke the many thoughts that went through Scourge's head as he died, many endings went through mine as I wrote this. It took me a while before I settled on this one. :P**  
 **I hoped you enjoyed!**


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